Maurice Hinchey leaves legacy (with video, list of career highlights)

Hinchey announces his retirement last January during a speech at the Senate House State Historic Site in Uptown Kingston. (Freeman file photo)

When the 113th Congress convened on Thursday, the House was without Maurice Hinchey for the first time in 20 years.

Political observers describe Hinchey's retirement -- announced last January and effective this past week -- as the end of an era for the former congressman and state assemblyman, and for the Hudson Valley.

"His environmental record will ultimately be his biggest legacy," said Julian Schreibman, the Stone Ridge Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, in a bid to represent large swaths of Hinchey's old congressional district after last year's redistricting.

For Schreibman, Hinchey's "courage" to stand up for his beliefs even when they were unpopular is what he will remember first about the sometimes-controversial Saugerties Democrat.

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Schreibman cited the former congressman's early opposition to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq as well as the late-1990s repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which was enacted to prevent stock market crashes. Many have said the deregulation effort helped set the stage for the financial collapse of 2008.

A number of Republicans, including Ulster County GOP Chairman Roger Rascoe and Hinchey's opponent in his final two elections, George Phillips, said even though they disagreed with Hinchey on just about every issue, they respected his 38 years of government service.

Still, Rascoe said Hinchey "supported policies that our grandchildren will being paying for." Phillips, meanwhile, described the federal funding Hinchey brought to the congressional district over the years as perhaps good for the region on one hand, but on the other, part of a system that drives runaway spending and debt for the nation as a whole.

Fighting for the environment

Hinchey first ran to represent what then was a heavily Republican Ulster County in the state Assembly in 1972, but lost to incumbent H. Clark Bell. In 1974, Hinchey defeated Bell, a three-term incumbent, and soon after began serving on the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee. He was appointed chairman of the committee in 1979, a position he kept until he ran for Congress in 1992.

Ned Sullivan, executive director of the Poughkeepsie-based environmental group Scenic Hudson, said Hinchey played a pivotal role in shaping a generation of environmental legislation, particularly laws governing air and water quality and hazardous and solid waste disposal.

As chairman of the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee, Hinchey led an investigation into Love Canal, the site of a 40-acre chemical landfill in the city of Niagara Falls, N.Y., that Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corp. sold to the local school board for $1 in 1953. An elementary school subsequently was built there, and a nearby residential neighborhood grew.

Author Judith Layzer wrote in "The Environmental Case" that, by 1978, "Americans began to hear about a terrifying public health nightmare" when news outlets began reporting "hundreds of families were being poisoned by a leaking toxic waste dump beneath their homes" in the Love Canal area.

The Love Canal saga was the catalyst for the national legislation known as the Superfund Act, which requires polluters to pay taxes that are used to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, there are 1,730 Superfund sites today across the United States.

Sullivan said Hinchey helped secure a $1 billion bond in the state Legislature as New York began its own Superfund program. Sullivan was the state Department of Environmental Conservation's deputy commissioner at that point and said Hinchey was a critical partner is remediating thousands of toxic sites between 1987 and 1992.

Sullivan said Hinchey helped add meat to what started out as skeletal Superfund legislation and remained an environmental watchdog afterward.

He recalled the Environmental Conservation Committee chairman would assemble neighbors with public health concerns related to hazardous wastes and then meet with Sullivan to convey those concerns.

Another Superfund site in which Hinchey had a particularly active role was the Hudson River.

Hinchey led the fight in Albany as an assemblyman, and later as a congressman, to force General Electric to pay for and carry out the cleanup of 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) the company had dumped into the river north of Albany from 1947 to 1977.

That cleanup is happening now.

Hinchey also was instrumental in many other environmental initiatives and investigations while he was in the Assembly, including creating the Hudson River Valley Greenway to protect and preserve land along the river, promoting regulations to protect the New York City watershed, helping pass the nation's first law to control acid rain and eliminating local landfills while increasing recycling and composting.

Hinchey also led an investigation into organized crime's control of the garbage-hauling industry that led to the conviction of more than 20 criminal figures, including one for murder, between 1982 and 1992.

Democrat Michael Hein, the Ulster County executive, said that when Hinchey became a state lawmaker, many of Hinchey's views on protecting the environment were not part of the mainstream. He called Hinchey a "pioneer" before the environmental movement gained momentum in the 1970s.

Hinchey continued his environmental activism after he defeated Republican Robert Moppert of Broome County in the 1992 congressional race.

In his first year in Congress, Hinchey helped spearhead an effort to preserve more than 15,000 acres in Orange County's Sterling Forest, which he described as "the last significant area of open space in the New York metropolitan region and an important watershed for southeastern New York and northern New Jersey." Later, he wrote and pushed for the passage of legislation creating the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, which he has described as building on the Greenway legislation and giving the area more access to federal money.

"I can't think of another congressman who has been so visionary, such a champion and so effective ... in protecting our historical and natural resources in the Hudson River Valley," Sullivan said.

One of Hinchey's recent environment-related accomplishments was securing almost $4 million in federal funding to help convert the old Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge into the Walkway Over the Hudson pedestrian park.

Against fracking

Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner, D-Clinton, who was Schreibman's opponent in a primary this past September, highlighted Hinchey authoring legislation, which has not been approved, to regulate the controversial natural gas drilling known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The natural gas industry argues the process -- in which gas is extracted from shale formations by injecting water and chemicals at high pressure -- creates jobs and lowers energy costs, but environmental activists contend it contaminates drinking water.

Hinchey's legislation would have required public disclosure of the chemicals injected into the ground to break up rocks and free the gas, and it would have allowed the U.S. Environmental Agency to regulate fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act. In 2009, Hinchey also authored the appropriations language that initiated the EPA's current study on fracking.

Solar energy

On both the environmental and business fronts, Carl Meyer, co-chief executive officer of The Solar Energy Consortium, said starting the Ulster County-based nonprofit organization -- which was designed to create a local manufacturing cluster for solar power products -- would have been impossible without Hinchey, who acquired millions of dollars worth of federal earmarks for the initiative.

In nearly five years, Hinchey estimated, the cluster has created 600 jobs in Ulster County, but Meyer said last week that he has lost track of the job count because the tough economic climate for the industry has led to some cyclical layoffs by member companies.

Meyer said none of the solar energy companies that have relocated to Ulster County have gone under and the local sector continues to experience slow, incremental growth.

The initiative to bring green jobs to the area has been controversial among Freeman readers who question how effective the solar cluster has been and whether it was worth the money. Meyer gives the effort a B-plus, saying that while the sector has not become as robust as he hoped, the consortium has helped establish a local industry that has survived in difficult economic conditions.

Controversies

Despite his accomplishments, Hinchey's time in the House has not been without its problems.

The former congressman has faced questions about whether a property he partly owns and on which the Diamond Mills Hotel and Conference Center sits in Saugerties could benefit from funding he secured for town of Saugerties infrastructure improvements.

The Washington Post reported in February that Hinchey was among "33 members of Congress who have steered more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers' own property," but Hinchey's staff denied there was any conflict of interest regarding the hotel project.

Mike Morosi, Hinchey's spokesman until last week, issued a statement to the Post saying the property in which Hinchey had less than a 1 percent stake did not connect to any sewer lines that were being repaired and that it was several blocks from crosswalks that were being repaired.

In response to inquiries on the matter from the Freeman in 2010, Hinchey's staff said the original press release announcing the grant included some inaccurate information about where the project would take place, which prompted the questions.

Prior to a debate with Phillips in October 2010, there was a brief dust-up between Hinchey and Freeman correspondent William J. Kemble that followed Kemble persistently asking questions about whether the congressman has a financial interest in a Saugerties commercial development.

A TV news video of the exchange shows Hinchey telling Kemble to "shut up" and saying three times that the correspondent is "full of baloney." Kemble has said the congressman, a short time later, put his "fingers around my neck," though there is no video record of that.

Hinchey also came under fire for, but was never implicated in, a scandal involving former Besicorp owner Michael Zinn, who pleaded guilty in 1997 to bypassing federal election laws by giving Besicorp employees $27,000 in cash and bonuses with the understanding that the employees, in turn, would donate the money to Hinchey's 1992 congressional campaign. Zinn, who was Hinchey's campaign finance chairman, served six months in federal prison and was fined $36,673. He died in a 2005 plane crash.

Early in his tenure as congressman, Hinchey was arrested for having a .32-caliber handgun in a carry-on bag at a Washington, D.C.-area airport. He pleaded "no contest" to the crime and was given a suspended sentence.

More recently, Hinchey was accused of striking a National Rifle Association member at the Rosendale Street Festival in 2008. A harassment charge stemming from the incident ultimately was dropped.

Cancer

Hinchey was diagnosed with colon cancer in early 2011 and has undergone two surgeries since then.

The congressman said recently that he is retiring in part because his health problems have made him less effective, though he said he has been getting stronger every day.

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HINCHEY THROUGH THE YEARS

During a recent farewell and thank-you tour, Maurice Hinchey highlighted the following among his major achievements while in the New York Assembly (1975-92) and Congress (1993-2012).

Assembly

o The Environmental Conservation Committee, with Hinchey as chairman, conducted a successful investigation into the causes of contamination at Love Canal, near Niagara Falls, N.Y., and developed environmental legislation that included the nation's first law to control acid rain.

o Between 1982 and 1992, Hinchey led an investigation into organized crime's control of the waste-hauling industry that led to the conviction of more than 20 criminal figures, including one for murder.

o Hinchey led the fight to force General Electric to pay for and clean up the 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that it dumped into the Hudson River north of Albany between 1947 and 1977. Hinchey said he also fought against numerous attempts to delay and narrow the cleanup process.

o Hinchey helped develop the statewide system of urban cultural parks and authored the legislation that created the Hudson River Valley Greenway. (Later, as a member of Congress, he wrote and pushed for legislation that created the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area.)

Congress

o Hinchey helped spearhead legislation in 1993 to preserve more than 15,000 acres in Orange County's Sterling Forest, which he described as the last significant area of open space in the New York metropolitan region.

o Also in 1993, Hinchey and then-U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., authored legislation designating New York's Route 17 as Interstate 86. After the legislation passed, the 381-mile stretch was set on a path to receive a wide array of new federal funding.

o In 1999, Hinchey pushed through an amendment that required the CIA to report to Congress on its involvement in the 1973 coup of Chile's democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Following the coup, Gen. Augusto Pinochet began his 17-year dictatorship. The report, now known as the Hinchey Report, makes a clear case that the United States, at the highest levels of government, was deeply involved in the destabilization of Chile's government.

o As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Hinchey secured billions of dollars in federal aid to, as he put it, spur job growth, improve public infrastructure, advance education and the arts, improve health-care facilities and services and support economic development in communities throughout his congressional district.

o Hinchey provided key support for the revitalization of the old Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge and secured the first public funds for what eventually would become the Walkway Over the Hudson. The congressman secured $1.34 million in initial federal funding for the project and helped deliver an additional $2.4 million through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the economic stimulus.

o Hinchey was one of the first and most outspoken members of Congress to oppose President George W. Bush's effort to invade Iraq in 2003.

o Hinchey was an outspoken critic of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program that was instituted under Bush. He helped secure the launch of a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the program.

o In 2007, Hinchey led the effort to establish The Solar Energy Consortium, which is based in Ulster County.

o Hinchey co-authored the FRAC Act, which would mandate public disclosure of chemicals used in hyrdraulic fracturing (or fracking), a controversial process of extracting natural gas from shale formations. The FRAC Act also calls for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate fracking under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. In 2009, Hinchey authored the appropriations language that initiated the EPA's current national study of fracking.